


when the dust settles

by itsgoodtobeking



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Chemistry, Convalescence, Eye Injury, M/M, Nygmobblepot, an extension of 5x11, between 'brothers' scene & Jim's promotion, chilling in the library, nursing back to health, riddler cameo, strong bond, visual impairment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-04 15:58:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18607783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsgoodtobeking/pseuds/itsgoodtobeking
Summary: [COMPLETE] Oswald just stares at him, searching his face with his one fierce eye, turned silver in the half-dark. He's suddenly gripped by crazy, warring urges to both take Ed by the shoulders and shake some sense into him and to pull him close at the same time, to laugh and to cry with all the violence of his adrenaline-jitters from the firefight. But he only deflates, eye slipping shut. He huffs a broken little laugh."Well, who else do I have?"





	1. 1

Oswald _does_ actually try, though neither of them expect very much to come of it. And predictably, out of the six calls he makes, three go straight to an answering machine, two ring endlessly, and only one doctor picks up, telling him in no uncertain terms that he barely has supplies for himself and his family, nevermind enough to do charity work, hero or no hero. And that is that.

Sighing sharply, Oswald tosses his flip-phone aside, onto the other half of the couch, not particularly caring if it slips between cushions and gets lost. The way things are, it's not much more useful than a paperweight. There's no one left to call. No one worth calling. He looks to Ed, drums his fingers over an armrest.

Ed's jaw tenses against the sound. For the better half of an hour he's been hovering over the shelves of non-fiction, the 610s, moving between them and the fireplace to read by the light, muttering to himself. It'd have been easier to pull teeth out of him than a conversation, not that that's kept Oswald from trying.

Oswald touches his fingers to the right side of his face, probing around the fierce pain in his socket. His cheek feels weird and plasticky-numb where the skin isn't wet and it doesn't take pressing the cloth square wadded up against his eye to know it has now soaked through. From across the room, Ed hisses a curse, and Oswald glances from the blood sticking to his fingertips to Ed standing at the corner of the room, turning his head to see him more fully.

"Anything...?"

Ed slaps the book down onto a growing stack. He can feel Oswald's gaze on him, pressing and insistent. Like the barrel of gun.

"I was a forensic scientist, Oswald." He tosses up a hand, letting it come to rest on his hip. "Not an ophthalmologist."

Oswald considers this. He watches Ed slip a few fingers under his glasses. rubbing the tiredness out of one eye. His own burns; strange thing to feel, he thinks, when it also feels wet, inside and out.

"True," he begins, "but you have proven yourself to be far more than either of those things."

He rises from the couch, unsteady enough that Ed is very glad he took the time to disable _all_ his pressure-plate traps first before letting Oswald inside. Seeing Oswald hobble for him, dragging his foot, Ed feels his body tense, his arms ready to snap out to catch him. But Oswald manages to stay up on his feet where he stops, mulish and determined. Firelight only sharpening the jut of his jaw. 

"You and I both know that if you hadn't found me in the woods that night many years ago and known what to do... I wouldn't be here."

The bullet that had miraculously failed to shatter the scapula or shear major blood vessels had nicked Oswald's lung. It really had been messy, complicated business, patching him up - and how many people could say they'd successfully decompressed a _tension pneumo_ with just a snipped off pen tube?

"And if that doesn't speak enough to your skill," Oswald continues, "need I remind you that you also built the entirety of the S.S. Gertrude from scratch, practically on your own, with nothing but a blueprint?" 

He pauses, punctuates it with a lift of an eyebrow.

Ed can't help the little smile teasing one corner of his mouth.

"Yeah, well. Still." He notches up his glasses. "...Kind of apples and oranges, Oswald."

"Well they're _both_ still fruit!" Oswald snaps. His lips are a tight, angry line, but only for a moment. "My point is that you are a brilliant young man... and if there is anyone who can do this, it's you." 

He pauses then, lashes flickering, like something has come to him. His hands bunch into fists at his sides. 

"I trust you, Ed." He says. "You know this."

A log snaps in the fire. 

Ed swallows.

"...Why?"

Oswald just stares at him, searching his face with his one fierce eye, turned silver in the half-dark. He's suddenly gripped by crazy, warring urges to both take Ed by the shoulders and shake some sense into him and to pull him close at the same time, to laugh and to cry with all the violence of his adrenaline-jitters from the firefight. But he only deflates, eye slipping shut. It's a moment before he huffs a broken little laugh.

"Well, who else do I have?"

Oswald shrugs lamely, smiling, when Ed says nothing. 

What could he say?

"Besides..." He points to the right side of his face, "...it's already blinded and hurts like a sonofabitch; what's the worst you could do?"

 _Cause an infection_ , Ed is immediately tempted to point out, mentally rattling off a few of many complications. _Ptosis; granuloma_. Even the most successful of surgeries weren't without post-op risks, always. But he bites it all back, feeling something twist sharply in his gut when Oswald lets out another laugh. It rings through the library, harsh-sounding.

Nothing is funny. And nothing becomes funny when Oswald shakes and shudders. When a sob punches from his lungs and he chokes on it, his face crumpling.

Ed cocks his head slightly, as if a different angle might help him understand. "...Oswald?"

A part of him thinks - wants to think - it's just the pain. It's the simplest explanation, a thing they could throw pills at until it went away, or at least, faded to a dull roar. But few things in life are easy, for either of them - and for a _brilliant young man_ Ed realizes just how out of his depth he is when Oswald turns away from him like a child, shielding his face with a hand, and falls apart. 

"...oh god," Oswald rasps, barely above a whisper, before jagged, gasping breaths take him over.

Shock has a weight of its own, a real, crushing weight that bows Oswald's shoulders and folds his body in on itself. It had to hit him sometime, but Ed feels no less prepared, seeing it happen.

Ed feels an ugly hollowness in his chest. He looks on, hands at his sides. The library keeps perfectly still all around them, its breath sucked in too, for too long. They stay like that a minute, standing feet away and miles apart. A gap neither of them know how to bridge.

"I'm sorry." Ed tries.

It sounds flat, hollow in his ears. Maybe it does to Oswald too, when he cuts off everything he isn't saying, all the reassurances he isn't offering, with a shake of his head, wiping at his face over and over. There's blood smeared over his trembling knuckles, his fingertips. 

Everyone has their own battles to fight, Ed thinks.

When the pain rocking Oswald from the inside out settles and he finally goes quiet and still, limping back to the couch, is when Ed finds something to say. Not what Oswald needs to hear in his brokenness - he still isn't sure what that would be - but something he knows Oswald will want him to say all the same.

"I'll see what I can do." Ed tells the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Pressed sleeves rolled up, Ed drags the lightest chair he can find over to the couch where Oswald is lying back, sitting it by the end table where he's laid out everything he needs. It's a creaky, wooden thing, feeling like it could give if he were any heavier.

"Okay..." He turns to crook the neck of a desk lamp, seeking an angle that won't blind either of them. Then he dips into the darkness halving Oswald’s vision, reaching to loosen his tie, open his collar. With the pain worsening, they're at a point where it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission in trying to make Oswald more comfortable. He smells of sweat and hair gel and the woodsy spice of his cologne, warm and familiar, and Ed almost smiles, despite himself. Because _of course_ Oswald would march to war styled and dressed to the nines - with pure _panache_ \- prepared to die with some class in a city sorely lacking it.

"Isn't there anything you can give me?" Oswald asks him. His voice is hoarse, cracking. "A sedative, or _something_?"

Ed plucks an alcohol wipe from the first aid kit. For all the equipment he helped himself to from the GCPD and the clinic in the Narrows, none of it feels like enough.

"Sorry, Oswald." He tears the wrapper, unfolding the wipe and briskly cleaning his hands before stretching them into latex gloves. "I needed it."

He considers explaining that he shot himself up with what he had left in a desperate bid for his sanity after waking, night after night, in dumpsters and in every dark, filthy corner in a city full of dark, filthy corners. Stumbling his way through life disheveled and angry and lost, smelling of wet dog and other peoples' piss. But Ed says nothing, thinning his lips. The past could stay in the past, at least until Oswald was better equipped to handle a bit more guilt-tripping over it. Less a jab, and more a poke, because if they're not even by now, then the gap is closing fast.

Sucking in a breath in through his teeth, Ed gingerly unpeels the cloth gummed to Oswald's eyelid. The ruptured jelly of his eye swims in blood. A paler, pinkish fluid wells up as he blinks, oozing from the corner. Oswald's other eye watches Ed through glinting motes of dust, fixed on him with an intensity Ed can feel to the pit of his stomach. It's even harder to look at, and he can't say why.

"Chin up." He prompts Oswald.

He takes some scissors, swallowing against the rise of bile in his throat while snipping away a few strips of surgical tape. "This'll keep your eye open. Just try to relax. This... is probably going to feel a little weird."

By _a little_ of course, he means _very_ ; it goes without saying, and he half-expects Oswald to grouse or to whine, or snap at him like a wounded animal. He’s earned his right to, if nothing else; Ed will give him that. But Oswald only tilts his head back and waits as well as one can wait for something terrible to happen, his lashes trembling as he searches the ceiling, as if looking for an exit.

Ed leans over him again, close enough to hear the soft, anxious rattling air through his lips, the muscles clicking in his throat. He eases his twitching eyelids apart between his thumb and forefinger, reaching for the tape. It's the best he can do without the right speculum for the job.

Oswald's knee begins to shake.

Ed sees it only as he pulls back, feeling echoes of that same hiving, nervous energy deep inside himself. It hasn't reached his hands yet, but he won't let it; never has. Looking away, he grabs something off the table, bunching it up and pushing it into one of Oswald's hands.

Oswald squeezes it curiously in his fingers before holding it out in front of himself, above his head. "...A towel?"

"A gag," Ed clarifies.

A beat passes.

"...In case you wanted it."

Oswald holds onto the towel for a while, knuckles white around it as he twists it, slowly, into a tight coil. One way; then the other. His jaw is already trembling when he fits it in his mouth. He bites down on it hard, to steady himself, his nostrils flaring; and for neither the first time or the last, Ed can't shake the idea that they both should've swallowed their pride and resentment and gone to Lee in the hopes that she knew more about this, or at least had access to other and better supplies.

But shaking or not, Oswald's mind is still made and Ed knows there's no talking him out of it, much less this far in. He nods at Ed, his throat moving. He made his choice, and he'd live with this one too.

"All right - look up," Ed reminds him.

All he can hope, now, is that Oswald's faith in him is enough to keep him still.


	3. Chapter 3

He ties off the plastic bag with dirty bandages and latex gloves and the remains of Oswald's eye and steps out the back door into the dawn still gently breaking: a pale, silvery wash of light. He heaves the bag into a dumpster with a grunt, letting the lid slam shut on it. It's done.

He heaves a breath he didn't realize he was holding, hard and knotted in his chest. Then he leans up against the grimy brick a while. He feels a whirling storm in his head. A breeze flaps an unpinned bit of tarp in the alley - someone's blanket, probably. It’s cool on Ed’s neck, bitter-smelling with smoke and their ruined dreams of escape to the mainland.

Oswald's blood in the concrete, he muses, wryly. Oswald's blood on the concrete and slick on his gloves.

He braces the wall and doubles over, retching.

He's opened chests with bone saws; poked and prodded every possible bodily cavity and gouged open new, bleeding ones of his own on the hunt for foreign objects, wielding forceps and tweezers and scalpels with delicate precision. Like extensions of his own body.

But cadavers don't scream.

Ed coughs and wipes his mouth, bracing his knees as he gulps for air until he feels well enough to straighten up.

The city all around them is too still, too silent, for what came before it. He kicks at a rusted can, listening to it skip and scrape over the asphalt. He barks a curse into the air. No one answers; no one cares.

He should've guessed this rotting cesspool would call to Oswald again, like a bad ex, exerting its magnetic pull. Willing him to fight among idiots and ingrates.

He wonders if Oswald will still think it was worth it.


	4. Chapter 4

The couch creaks just before the bottom drops out of his dreamless sleep and Oswald falls _awake_ , hurtling back into his body where the pain is waiting. He was king of Gotham, many times, not that pain cares. It's bigger than he is, and fiercer, pressing him into the couch as it lays heavy on top of him.

Ed looks up from the _choose-your-own-adventure_ novel he has bookmarked in several places with his fingers; light entertainment while it lasted. The room whirls when he stands, as if he's gotten up too fast. He's not close enough to see the panic rising into Oswald's eye, but he can feel it: a silent cry for help - before the actual cries knife through the air - like the chemical distress signals living plants would release when under attack. In a few long strides, he closes the distance between them, ready, at Oswald's side with some Ibuprofen and a glass of water. Oswald is still calling for him, over and over, like a man fighting a nightmare; strangled, rasping attempts at his name.

"Here, Oswald..."

Panting, Oswald cracks open his eye a moment. It turns to him, bleary and red and pleading, the heel of one hand jammed up against his bandaged socket. His face shines with sweat or tears and Ed isn’t sure whether he reads blame in it.

"Try not to put too much pressure on it." He tries, holding the glass out enough so that it enters his field of vision. Oswald swings out an arm to grab it at the same time, clumsily bumping it with his knuckles. It flies out of Ed's grip and crashes over the floor. Water spills everywhere. Ed stares at it, all the shards of glass sparkling like sequins.

"Oh dear," he hears himself say.

Oswald's fingers curl closed, his arm folding back against his body. It's a gesture so tired, resigned.

Ed pulls in a breath. "Hang on."

Swiftly stepping around the mess, he makes a beeline to what had been the staff lounge, once, oak cabinets and fading chintz wallpaper. There, he grabs a fresh glass, filling it at the sink. Gone long enough, it seems, for Oswald to consider the idea that he might not actually come back.

"Ed...?"

"Coming--" Ed snaps off the tap, rustling around drawers and dropping in a straw into the drink. He's moving quickly.

Oswald's chest heaves, a stricken expression on his face. The look of a child left behind on a busy sidewalk, swarmed and lost in the roil and the indifference of the city.

"Where? I, I can't--"

"Here..." Glass grits under the soles of Ed's shoes. A moment later, he has settled back into the _surgery_ chair, leaning forward. "I'm here." He says.

Oswald's fingers reach out again, cautious this time, but no less determined. They find him instead. Brush his sleeve, curling around him.

Ed looks at Oswald's hand. His arm stills under it, all of him does, and he feels his face go a little blank. Then, the moment passes.

"Ibuprofen, extra strength." He offers the now-warm gel capsule kept in his other hand. It's a needless explanation, because he can already feels bitten fingernails lightly scraping it out of his palm. "It'll help."

Oswald slips it into his mouth and looks to the glass next, dull-eyed and wanting. Ed brings it to him, turning the straw as he lifts his head, crooking it. Oswald feels for it with his lips and begins to drink, his cheeks hollowing slightly. It's cool, sharply refreshing. Tastes like gold. He mewls in his throat between deepening, needy gulps, draining out the glass until he's out of breath and only a thin rim of water remains.

Ed sits it down at the foot of the couch where he's sure neither of them are very likely to kick it over. At some point, he feels Oswald's fingers drift down his arm, tracing a tingling line to his wrist, the knob of bone there.

 _Careful, Eddie_ \--, a voice sneers into his ear. Riddler grins at him from the floor, reflections upon reflections in the bigger chunks of broken glass. _Give him that hand long enough and he'll take it for himself. An eye for a hand? I'd hardly call it a fair trade._

Ed turns away from his laughter, his jaw winding tighter. As pained sighs peter off into whimpers, fewer and further apart, he begins to hear a pattering against the window and wonders when the rain started.

Oswald's hand twitches once, squeezing needfully. Bringing him back.

It's a long wait until the pain eases off. Ed stays with him still, watching the gentling rise and fall of his chest, the cords into his neck softening. The rain slows to a stop before Oswald's grip on him relaxes and they both can breathe a little easier.


	5. Chapter 5

Ed checks Oswald's dressings.

Ed reorganizes the fiction by the first three letters of the author's last name. Then by genre.

Ed heaves himself out of the broken-in leather armchair when he tires of reading, stepping out for air.

Time drags while he waits for Oswald to come to. When he does, Oswald doesn't stay awake for much longer than it takes Ed to feed him more ibuprofen and share some of the canned food he has scavenged over the months, but it's nice, hearing Oswald try to talk a little, even if he hasn't much that's new to say. 

(“It’s like an army of screaming schoolchildren banging pots and pans with wild abandon”, he croaks, when Ed asks about the persisting headache. Ed winces a little in sympathy.)

A thick slice of Spam and baby corn are not the fine dining experience Oswald's used to, but Oswald doesn't care. Food is food and he's hungry, Ed knows he is, despite the slow, painfully calculated way he moves his fork to and from his mouth.

Ed has to look away from the trembling hand that holds it.

\---

Another _snip_ of tape.

Oswald is awake and staring hazily into space; patient, not that he has much of a choice. If he moves even slightly, he knows he'll anger the pain all over again, work it up from a steady throbbing to an ice pick-like stabbing sensation splitting his skull, and there's four hours between him and the next gel capsule. He's come to dread the glass of water he chases it down with because it means having to piss that much sooner, means having to brace the wall just to get to where he needs to be, navigating the bathroom and everything in it in the dark, because light _hurts_.

"Honestly--" Ed is dabbing ointment onto a patch of raw skin above Oswald's eyebrow, "It looks pretty good. All things considered."

They both have different ideas of what _pretty good_ means for the eye, though the one thing they could agree on is that there's nothing _pretty_ about the pocket in his skull Oswald is left with, livid and glistening, the colour of fresh meat. Without anything left to give it shape, his eyelid droops limply over it, a bruised flap of skin.

"No fever or pus." Ed continues, daring to sound hopeful, pleased with his handiwork. "There's some swelling, but that's to be expected. I think you should start feeling better in a few days."

Oswald heaves a sigh past the nausea that sits heavy in his throat.

"...Thank god for that." He rasps.

There's a trickle of relief there, in a voice otherwise so pale and wrung-out. Neither of them have slept very well for days.

"Would you like to see it?" Ed asks, after a moment.

Oswald blinks at him like he's been slapped.

"No--" It comes kneejerk-fast, with finality. The answer hangs in the air for too long for either of them to brush it off without a second thought. "...not now." Oswald adds, quieter, retreating into himself.

Ed looks down at the q-tip in his fingers, as if he's forgotten what it's for. He feels too big for the room.

"Okiedoke."

He bags the swab and moves to tape down each corner of a fresh gauze patch, silent, taking his time.

"In a few weeks you should be able to get fitted with a prosthetic." He smooths over the strips, pulling back to look Oswald over. "The good ones are near-impossible to tell from the real thing -- unless someone really knows what to look for."

Oswald tries to smile, fails. His eyelashes flutter restlessly.

"It will take some getting used to," he says, after a time, choking on the words.

He stops talking.

Off come the latex gloves, pulling at Ed's skin as he peels them away. He bags them and just sits a while, drowning in silence and guilt, eyes closing briefly when he lifts his fingers to massage the bridge of his nose. Vivid sense-memories roll over him: Oswald slamming into him and the explosion rocking the barricade, a wave of pure heat and force ripping through the air; the jagged scream piercing the ringing in his ears; blood roaring between his temples and more blood pouring down Oswald's face and through his fingers. It had all happened so fast, like time had folded in on itself. Oswald had been fine one moment, grinning savagely down the barrel of his gun, a force of nature, and the next --

Ed's jaw firms. He shakes his head.

"You shouldn't have pushed me out of the way, Oswald."

The words fill the library, sucking the air out of it. Oswald turns his head, looking at him like he's only just noticed his presence. A crease appears between his brows; a pained, perplexed expression so childish that Ed almost has to look away.

"I had to."

He says it so easily, like there never was any other option; it doesn't make sense to Ed.

"You didn't _have_ to do _anything_ , Oswald."

A long-suffering sigh gathers in Oswald's lungs. "...Don't be ridiculous." There's a pause, then, one that settles heavy, and Ed watches a softness come over his face, his gaze turning inward.

"Yes, I may have had both my eyes, then... but there was and only ever will be one Edward Nygma." Oswald snorts to himself, wistful. "...And I would much rather have a friend by my side than just another memory of someone I cared about."

Ed takes it all in, mystified. He feels his heart heave, feels a tightening in his throat. No one speaks - a silence unfilled by more explanations or demands or insults only half-meant, their usual kind of exchanges. But Ed can sense an entire conversation in the pale, gleaming eye Oswald turns on him, in the wry upturn at the corner of his mouth.

"Thank you." Ed says, finally.

Oswald considers him. Then he reaches out. His hand is cool, always kinder than Ed expects it to feel when it's on him, clasping his like this.

"Of course."

His voice is worn, soft.

Ed's a little surprised that Oswald lets him go when he does. 

Drawing back, Oswald looks up, lacing his fingers over his chest. He looks relaxed, almost peaceful, to Ed; like a star-gazer. A weary chuckle bubbles up in Oswald's throat, gently breaking the stillness around them.

"...as bitterly, at times, as I have tried..." He says to a spot of mold on the ceiling, "I suppose there are some things that I simply cannot shake."

Listening, Ed is stuck by the sense there's something he should be doing, something he should be saying.

"What things?" He hears himself ask, unsure Oswald is even talking to him at all. But there's a flicker of emotion on Oswald's face, hearing that - an expression both tender and full of need - before he quietly deflates, _settles_ , a familiar brittleness and resignation in the smile he offers in response.

The library breathes around them, its musty, vaguely sour smell filling his lungs. A safe smell. This is their fortress; as forgotten as they are as the dust settles around them. Hour by hour, the glittering promise of a new life on the other side of the pier begins to feel like some fading sleep-dream, something that was never going to happen. The submarine and all their riches were gone, but no one could take their hunger and ambition away from them.

"We'll take Gotham back." Ed grits out. "Make it ours. The way it should've been."

He grins his reckless grin, like a man who thinks he'll live forever and dares anyone to tell him any differently. It’s infectious, and Oswald can’t help a giddy sort of laugh, one that almost reaches his eye. 

"Yes - and I look forward to it," Oswald tells him, and Ed doesn't doubt it. If Gotham couldn't respect them, Ed thinks, then it'd learn to fear them. It’s what seemed to last longest in this town.

With a softening smirk, he squeezes Oswald's shoulder lightly, conspiratorially, hearing a little hitch in Oswald's lungs, so sharp in the dark. He's looking at him and Oswald is looking back, rapt; and in this moment they become conscious of the space between them and between the words they're saying and not saying, conscious of a trembling in the air as they stand together on the edge of a future brimming with possibility.

It feels like a long time before the next moment comes.

"But first -- you hungry?" Ed asks. "I've got sardines - it’s good protein. Can't plot on an empty stomach."

Oswald swallows, the blankness on his face lingering before giving way to a little smile, and it seems to Ed that the strength of his conviction has put some colour back into Oswald’s face, his gaze brighter and clearer than it has been in days.

"Right you are." He agrees after a beat, pleasantly enough, watching Ed intently as he pushes to his feet and disappears into his blindspot. "That sounds lovely."


End file.
